


grief is for the wolves

by ivorygraves



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison's Funeral, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Season/Series 03B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygraves/pseuds/ivorygraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funeral is quiet. </p>
<p>The casket in front of her is even quieter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grief is for the wolves

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago, before Season 4 even aired (and am subsequently super bitter how Allison's death was treated in canon). Originally, this was the beginning of a much longer story, but unfortunately I haven't had the time to finish anything beyond this point. I hope to add more to this eventually, but until then, consider this a oneshot.

“It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her at all the places where she was alive.”  - John Scalzi, _Old Man’s War_

\--

The funeral is quiet.

The casket in front of her is even quieter.

Lydia breathes in the cold air and listens.

There’s something in this silence that’s unsettling, after what felt like months - no, years, a lifetime - of hearing nothing but the rattling of hollowed voices in the night. It crept up on her in the cruelest way, this absence, this lack of connection. At least when she could hear them, she knew there was someone there. Knew there was someone trying to guide her, to tell her she wasn’t alone.

Stupidly, uselessly, Lydia imagines Allison opening the door to her coffin and telling her to _smile_. Smile, because someone might be falling in love with it.

A broken, wet laugh escapes her. It isn’t until a few people glance her way that she reaches up to wipe away her tear-stained cheeks. Makeup be damned. She swallows against the lump in her throat and locks her shoulders in place, tries to be stone as she stares resolutely ahead and catches Stiles’ eyes across from her.

For once, he’s quiet too. For some reason, that unsettles Lydia most of all. She can see the tired slump of his body, the shadows under his eyes. She remembers almost losing him too.

He’s standing next to Scott, their shoulders brushing against each other, Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall behind them. They look like a family. She tries to see Scott’s face, but his head is tilted to the ground, hands fisted tightly. Lydia pictures his eyes glowing red, can imagine him trying to keep himself from shifting in this moment.

Lydia can understand that. She doesn’t want to feel human right now either.

Stiles nods at her. The soft acknowledgement is comforting, in a twisted way. She feels like she should be sobbing, should be inconsolable. Maybe she would be, if that didn’t feel so private - not when she’d already broken down in Oak Creek, had walked into waiting swords and looked evil in the face and survived. Not when these people around her don’t _know_. Not really. Hunters or not, supportive classmates or otherwise, they have no idea about what really happened to her best friend. They know what they’re supposed to know, and nothing more. It all happened so fast.

There’s a eulogy. A speech about how great Allison was, how much they would miss her, how they were celebrating her life even while mourning her in death.  

Lydia remembers her mother telling her once that funerals were meant for the living. She hadn’t cared much then, but it seems apt now.

_She was a hero,_ she wants to tell them. She clenches her fists so hard she’s sure it’ll bring up blood. _She saved my life, even when I couldn’t save hers._

But of course, she can’t say that. She can’t begin to voice what she truly wants to say, and apparently, neither can the dead. It’s all so _quiet_.

Lydia wants to scream.

“Lydia?”

Startled, Lydia opens the eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed and stares at Chris Argent. The funeral was over. People were wandering to their cars; she can see Isaac waiting by Argent’s, his eyes still locked on the newly upturned patch of dirt.

She shivers and briefly wonders how long she’d zoned out before coming to the conclusion that it didn’t matter, really.

He looks smaller than usual, thinner, wrapped in his scarf and coat. His eyes are red. Lydia imagines she’s not looking much better. “Mr. Argent,” she returns, only faltering a little. Like everything else, this image is wrong. She should be in his house, going through his daughter’s closet to find a cute outfit for her to wear, should be drinking hot chocolate with her while they talked about boys, should be studying for exams and laughing and all the things best friends are supposed to laugh about while her father tells them to keep it down but is too amused to be truly stern.

A tendril of grief curls around her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Her voice sounds small even to her own ears.

Argent looks like he was expecting this. He smiles down at her, but it’s a raw, withered one; she wonders how many people he’s had to comfort so far. “It’s what we do,” he replies. He grasps her shoulder firmly. “It’s the price we pay, for choosing this life.”

She isn’t a werewolf; she can’t hear heartbeats, or blood pumping through veins, or the tells that reveal lies. But she feels it in him anyway. “Too high of a price, if you ask me,” she says bitterly.

“Yes,” Argent replies. “I feel the same way.”

And that breaks her. That tendril suddenly grips her tight and squeezes, chokes her until her vision begins to blur. “I tried,” she says, unable to look him in the face. “But I couldn’t--”

“I know,” he says sadly. “Lydia, there’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“There was-- I just couldn’t-- I didn’t--” She feels Argent’s hand squeeze her shoulder. Taking a deep breath, she tells herself to get a grip. “I just wish I could’ve been stronger,” she admits. “For her.”

Argent is quiet for a moment. “Me too,” he says. “I’ve been thinking that everyday, since my wife died.”

The admission makes Lydia finally meet his gaze. She wants to ask him why he’s telling her this, why he sought her out of all of them. _You should hate me,_ she wants to tell him. _I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t do anything but scream._

It makes her want to tell him everything, tell him about how she still glances over her shoulder expecting her to be there. How she listens for the whisper of his daughter in the trees; how for the first time, she wishes the silence would end when she can’t hear the voices. But there’s nothing; only the steady breath between them and the rhythm of her heart reminding her that she’s alive and Allison isn’t.

“How do you stand it?” Lydia asks.  

“Some days I don’t,” Argent admits. “Most days I do it because I have to. We have a code. Allison is the one who changed it, you know.” He watches her flinch at the sound of the name. Lydia wonders how many times he’s said it in front of a mirror, how many times he’s trained himself to finally let it fall past his lips. She wonders if his wife’s name was any easier to say. “We protect those who can’t protect themselves,” he continues. “It’s one day at a time.”

“Does it get any easier?”

Argent releases her shoulder and turns away. “I’ll let you know.”

\--

That night, Lydia dreams.

Or at least, she thinks she does. Her body is heavy with sleep as she gazes at the ceiling above her. In her mind’s eye, she imagines Chris Argent standing over her grave. He has his gun pointed at her, jaw clenched so tightly she almost misses the tears in his eyes.

Lydia’s breath hitches in the darkness. She feels the edges of her grave closing in on her, watches the light of the full moon behind him fade away. She doesn’t look away, though. She can’t. She wonders if this is what it’s like to die; slowly, carefully, the earth weighing down on her - _and she thinks of poor Atlas, with the whole glittering world on his shoulders_ \- dismantling her piece by piece. Or maybe death doesn’t happen to her, she thinks distantly. Maybe it’s happening to everyone else around her. She thinks she might have heard that somewhere before. Maybe in a book.

Argent is still above her. His finger is on the trigger of the gun, but his hand is trembling, like the way Allison’s did all those months ago in the forest. _Try the Mongolian draw._

She holds her breath, awaits the final plunge.

But something changes in him. He’s breathing hard, and it’s coming out in a fog around him. He slowly lowers his gun and shakes his head.

_No!_ Lydia wants to yell. _Don’t leave! Please don’t leave me!_

Argent smiles sadly at her and turns away.

_Wait!_ And she reaches out, tries to close the six foot chasm between them, but she can’t quite touch him, can’t see him in the sudden, aching flood of moonlight washing down on her and now she can see the blood on her hands and hear the sound of it hitting her cheeks and she feels the second her lungs collapse in her tiny little body and there’s too much dirt, too many worms all vying for her flesh and she’s sinking and the wolf is howling over her like it’s lost her, it’s _lost_ her, and suddenly she can’t see anything at all -

Lydia tries to scream, but she’s already dead.

She blinks, and suddenly she’s back in her room. The clock beside her reads 4:17AM. She slowly sits up in bed, running a hand over her face and through her sweat-drenched hair as she tries to get her shallow breathing back to normal. A part of her wonders why she’s still here in her house, why she hasn’t wandered off yet in a hazy fugue state. Another part chastises her for almost wishing she had.

Angrily, Lydia kicks the blankets off of her and lets her bare feet touch the carpet. She turns on the small night light beside her bed and glances at herself in the mirror. _Still whole,_ she tells herself. _Just a nightmare. Nothing more._

Lydia wonders about the science of mourning. If there are any papers, and how many trials have been conducted. She’d like to read them, if only to assure herself this was normal.

She feels like she hasn’t been here in days, but she knows that’s not true. Her mother came in just hours earlier, quietly asking her if she wanted a cup of tea, if she wanted her to braid her hair. If there was anything she could do.

Lydia remembers her mother’s soft eyes, her unusually delicate tone. She’s trying so hard, Lydia realizes, but she says no anyway. And that was the end of that.

Quietly, she begins picking up stray knick-knacks and stuffed animals she’d tossed to the floor. Usually she’s more orderly than this, but there’s been so much happening lately that she hasn’t cared much where her things go. It calms her racing heart now, gives her something to do so she won’t have to sleep.

She makes the mistake of walking into her closet, deciding she might as well pick out what she’s going to wear tomorrow. That’s when she sees it.

In the back of her closet, bunched up on the floor, is one of Allison’s blouses.

Lydia feels curiously numb as she stares at it. Like if she just keeps staring, it will do something other than be a forgotten article of clothing. She swallows past the lump in her throat and reaches for it, brushes her fingers against it once before gripping it in her hands and pulling it close to her. She remembers borrowing it, remembers thinking it was so pretty, remembers how she wanted to wear it on a date with Jackson what feels so long ago. She remembers never getting the chance.

Before she can register what she’s doing, her face is already buried in it. She can still smell her here, as if she was stitched into every bit of the fabric. She inhales deeply, and her shoulders shake. Grief grips her and holds her there, lays her out and unravels her until she’s crouched forward, fists clenched around it so tightly she fears she might tear it. She weeps and thinks _I have to return this._

And in that moment, there are no voices. There’s no one there at all. No one to witness her, so vulnerable and broken, hunched on the floor, body wracked with sobs and clinging to a silly piece of fabric like it was the only thing in the world that could hope to comfort her.

You were here with me once, Lydia thinks, and now this is all that’s left of you.

She thinks of Argent, alone in a house brimming with her memory.

It’s such a devastatingly sad thought that Lydia stops breathing.

She sits up and leans against the wall of her closet, silently smoothing out the blouse. Guilt pools in her breast, leaves her gasping as she tries to swim through it and consider what comes next. What should she do?

_What should I do?_

Lydia wipes at her eyes and pretends it helps. She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her head on them, contemplating her odd dream. What if it does mean something? What if it doesn’t? She’s honestly not sure which would be worse.

Either way, she finds herself slowly piecing it back together in her mind. It’s already a blur - a steep, nebulous realm that fell away just as quickly as it had risen. But she remembers blood, and a full moon.

She remembers a wolf.

She remembers earlier that day, how Stiles had looked at her. How she’d looked back, so startled by his silence. She closes her eyes against the onslaught of a monster wearing his face. She remembers diving into his subconscious with Scott, how desperate they were to save them. She remembers nearly dying.

She remembers Peter, of all people, calling out to her beyond the grave, telling her she was stronger than this.

_Beyond the grave._

It’s a quiet, creeping, insidious thing. It’s the way she feels when someone is about to die; that strange, tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon that she can’t shake. Briefly, she wonders if banshees can sense more than impending death. She wonders if they can do more than hear ghosts whispering in the dead of night, more than blindly following them to some grotesque destination.

She wonders where the extent of their powers lie.

Lydia slowly gets to her feet, cradling the blouse in her hands. She folds it gently and places it next to her purse before slipping into bed.

After all, she has school in a few hours.


End file.
